It may interest those friends who
were with us on Saturday and who were unable to be with us
yesterday, to know that we have not moved on in this
particular matter before us, from the point where we left it
on Saturday evening. Yesterday was occupied with other things,
so that we are able to go on together from that point in
relation to this matter of the Cross and the Eternal Glory.

But here again, just a preliminary word. It is of immense help
and value to be able to see the Bible as a whole... to have
all that is in it from the first to the last page, gathered up
under one thing, so that we can see that everything in it is
governed by that one thing, or relates to that one thing. The
Bible has become, so largely, a book of texts or promises for
peculiar needs and situations, and little bits for devotional
purposes, or subjects for preaching and teaching, and in the
main, these all just detach as fragments. Now, of course, that's
all right. We want our promises for our special needs, we want
our portions, our daily portions, and we want to understand
the distinctive subjects, but it is very much more profitable
to be able to see that everything in the Bible relates to one
thing, and to see how it does relate to that
one thing. In some way or another, everything in the Bible
focuses upon one thing. If we can just get our hand upon that
one thing, then we have the key for every door in the Bible;
every book and every subject. And we are at this time seeking
to bring that one comprehensive and all-inclusive thing into
view, and I trust that you will take your Bible in the future
and always see its parts in relation to the whole. It will
make your Bible live for you in a new way, if you do that.
Many parts that you won't understand, in themselves far too
complex, or difficult or deep, or even meaningless... if you
can just see how that fits into a whole, it will take on new
meaning and new life.

The whole is the Eternal Glory. From eternity to eternity,
God's object has been a creation with man at its centre,
reflecting Himself as the God of glory. The end to which He
is working, and which He will most assuredly realise, is
such a universe just filled with His glory. The Bible, then,
must be seen, pro and con, in the light of that. It must be
seen, either as setting forth that which can be glorified,
which can come to glory, or on the other hand, that which
must go in order that God may reach His end. Those two
aspects, then, are governing our thought and our
consideration at this time.

We reached the point on Saturday night in that
first section, going back before times eternal, before the
foundation of the world, and taking account of those
intimations given us, especially by our Lord Jesus Himself,
as to His place in the pre-creation glory, as He sought the
Father, to glorify Him with the glory which He had with Him
before the world was. Alongside of that we took another
passage, indicating that He was not to be alone in that
glory, but that God had made known the mystery of His will,
now in this dispensation, that we should be "unto
the praise of His glory" and that, as you know, is a phrase
connected with an elect people, the church - "unto the
praise of His glory". So Christ and His church are united in
those pre-creation thoughts and intentions of God, what we
are made to know as the will, "the mystery of His will",
"Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will",
and we have thrown that word "WILL" up into capitals and
quotes, because it is governing. The "WILL", then, leading
to creative activity, bringing in a new world order at the
beginning of this history.

We went on to note the rift, the rift in heaven
by a great revolt which took place there, and then its
repercussion, or shall we say: its reproduction, in human
history in the capture of man made for God's glory. And we
ended up with the forward thrust of the "WILL".
We saw coming right down from the eternity to come, yet to
be, the shadow of a Man - The Man - thrown
right down the ages, right down to the beginning of the
creation. Adam was a figure of Him that was to come, we are
told. From that intimation the figure of the Man is
discernible right through the Bible, in some way or another;
what He really is, and what is the caricature of Him, or the
contradiction of Him. By all contradictions God is
forcefully found to be saying, "This is not according to My
Man. The shadow of the Man. And then, to reach that end, to
realise that glorified Man as filling the whole creation:
the shadow of the Cross. I am not an artist. If I were an
artist, I would like to show this diagram in this way:
having the effulgent light coming down from the eternity yet
to be, and throwing its rays upon that Cross and then
through that Cross, the shadow of the Cross right back over
Old Testament history, for that's what it is, it's the glory
taking hold of the Cross and making the Cross its instrument
of bringing man to where God intended him to be, and intends
him to be to the eternal glory. It's the gloryofthe
Crossand
the glory by the Cross. The
shadow of the Cross therefore, is thrown by the very light
of eternity down the ages. You can't have a shadow without
light! If you are going to have a shadow of the Cross, it
must be made by light, and it is the light of the glory.
The Cross becomes illumined in its meaning and significance
by the glory.

Well, that leads us then to this morning and our
next phase and stage in this whole matter which is only in
the first place an enlargement of what we have just said:-

Mediation and the Glory.

This peculiarly
characterises that first section of the Bible, the first five
books, Genesis to Deuteronomy. Immediately, because of that
revolt, that rebellion, in man's heart, the glory was
withdrawn and put into reserve against the great work of
redemption and recovery. Immediately the glory was withdrawn,
the altar came into view, or shall I say: sacrifice
came into view. It's but the simplest hint that is given. The
word "altar" is not used, neither is the word "sacrifice", but
it is certainly implied. You have it in the third chapter of
Genesis, verse 21: "And Jehovah God made for Adam and for his
wife coats of skins, and clothed them" - the first intimation
of sacrifice, of death, in order to... shall we say, repair
the damage, to meet the situation which had come in. A
covering was demanded. I'm not going into all the details,
it's not possible to do that, simply, simply state the fact;
there is a lot behind it. A covering is demanded and that
covering is provided through death, the death of those animals
provided the skins. Most probably, if the rest of Scripture is
to be taken as giving meaning to this: it was lambs slain, and
their skins providing this covering. There is a vast amount of
the Bible gathered into that, but you will realise at once how
full and how rich it is when you are reminded that the
word which runs right through the whole Bible: "atonement",
means "covering". The very word itself means covering. And
when God clothed and covered He signified that atonement was
necessary and was the way back to the glory, or for the
recovering of the glory.

Now there is a
very interesting and instructive allusion to this at the other
end of the Bible. You go right through to the book of the
Revelation and you turn to chapter 3, at verse 16: "Because
thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee
out of My mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have
gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that
thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind
and... naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined
by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments,
that thou mayest clothe thyself, that the shame of thy
nakedness be not made manifest." That would suggest that the
physical nakedness of Genesis 3:21 is but a symbol of spiritual
nakedness. And if the white garments (which throughout the
whole of the Bible are symbolic of righteousness) are the
covering of the nakedness, then it is perfectly clear that
this nakedness was a state of unrighteousness which had got to
be covered, and to be covered with the garments of
righteousness.

So here you have
the whole work of atonement - covering - which is the putting
away of a state of spiritual nakedness that is unrighteousness
and the placing, in its place, of the covering: the garments
of righteousness. "The fine linen is the righteous
acts of the saints." All this and of course, heaps more,
gathered just into this very simple indication that God made
an atonement in principle, in type immediately the
glory was withdrawn. A covering by sacrifice, by death, a
covering for a stripped, naked, bare condition as before Him.
And remember: it's in that direction that this thing has its
real seriousness. There was not another man, woman or child in
the garden to behold these two - no one else to see their
nakedness - it was only God, only God. And true to principle,
you see, this is all a matter of how we stand before God! It
is God in Christ challenging Laodicea about this nakedness,
it's how we are in the sight of God, not first how we appear
before men. We may be making artificial covering before men
and pretending, covering up and making believe, and deceiving
them, but we can't do that before God. No, Christ was very
true to principle always, even in His illustrations, and when
He put words into the mouth of the repentant,
conscience-stricken prodigal son, He made him say: "Father, I
have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight." That's
a tremendous principle that covers all the ages. Not
just "I have sinned against other people" or, "I have sinned
against myself", sin and unrighteousness is something
that strikes at God, because it strikes at God's very
intention in making man, and sin, therefore, strikes at the
very purpose of man's creation. It is against God, it's
against heaven. But isn't it a very blessed thing to see that,
although it is against God, and the nakedness is open and bare
to God, it is God that takes the action to cover it.
And so God Himself introduced in person the:-

Function of the Altar and
the Priest.

If it will not be
misunderstood, I will say that God became the first active
priest. He took this matter in hand. And is not this a part of
that which is included in "the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world"? Here you are right at the beginning of creation
and the Lamb is slain there to cover, to cover this
departure from righteousness which always involves the
departure of glory.

So, we come to the
altar and the priest in this first section and can only note
it in general, for the detail is too much. It's interesting
perhaps just to note that in these five books, these first
five books of the Bible, the word "altar" itself occurs no
fewer than 88 times. That's impressive, that's impressive! And
then you find that in all the outstanding characters, on God's
side, the altar has a place. It evidently has a place with
Abel, although it is not mentioned that he put his offering
upon an altar, it is clearly shown that both he and Cain
offered in some way, and they must have had something that
corresponded to an altar, so that we can say that the altar
was there with Abel, in his blood-sacrifice. It is there and
mentioned definitely with Noah: "Noah builded an altar". Again
with Abraham, it is very much in view in his life, more than
once. And with Moses... how much the altar is in view. Of the
88 times to which I have referred, by far the greater number
are connected with the life and work of Moses. I am only
pointing out that in this first section the predominant idea
is the altar - the figure of the Cross. And it is an emphasis
upon this: that right in the first place where the glory has
been covered, has been suspended, it is the Cross in symbol
and type that is brought so fully into view as the way of
dealing with that and opening a path for the glory again.

So we have to look
at the altar, or the Cross, the function of the altar, and as
you know (most of you do, and I am always at this time bearing
in mind that there are those who don't know, as others do,
what is in the Bible) the Cross, or its representation in the
old dispensation: the altar, the altar has a double side, a
double meaning. On the one side, it sets forth the consuming
from the presence of God of that which is incapable of being
accepted by Him and being glorified. The sacrifice was brought
in in that dispensation and in a symbolic act the offerer laid
his hands upon the head of the sacrifice and by so doing in
type transferred himself and his sin to that sacrifice. He
declared as he laid his hands upon that sacrifice that he was
a sinner, and that being a sinner, he merited judgment and
death at the hands of God. As a sinner he had no standing with
God, no acceptance with God, no place with God. His only hope
was that he as a sinner, with his sin, should be put out of
the way. That is one half, only one half, but that is the
half. And so, with the transference of himself and his sin to
that offering, it was consumed wholly upon the altar,
nothing left but ashes... consumed from the presence of God.
That is one side of the meaning of the Cross of Christ that we
know. We haven't grasped it yet, we really haven't
apprehended that yet, we are not in the good of that yet; only
in part. But there it is. It stands as the one side: consumed
from God by transmission of sin to the offering.

There is the other
side:

Consumed Unto God

Because this
offering must in itself be without spot or blemish,
without sin; in itself it must be perfect. And because
God sees that side of the offering, it is not
annihilation; there is prospect. You see dear friends,
if you and I, as we are, took that place on the Cross, then
nothing would come back, nothing would survive. That would be
the end forever of every vestige of us, we would be blotted
right out, and there would be no afterward. But because the
sacrifice was perfect, without spot, without blemish, while it
took on itself the sin, in itself it was not sinful,
therefore there's another side and there can be that which
comes back. Well of course you see Christ at once, the
Sin-Bearer, but the sinless Sin-Bearer. And while, in that
representative capacity as the sinner, He was consumed from
God, as indicated in that terrible moment when He sensed His
God-forsakenness and said: "My God, Thou hast forsaken Me. Why
hast Thou forsaken Me?" That is, consumed from the presence of
God in the place of sinful man. On the other hand, that's
done! That is done, and the same Person is heard in the last
breath saying, "Into Thy hands, Father, into Thy hands I
commend My Spirit."It is all done, it is all
over that side and now He can commend Himself
to God. I think He is the only one in this universe who has
the right to use that word. I notice, I notice... of course
it's inadvertent and unintentional, but those of us who are
rather finicky about words notice things... I so often hear
people say, "Lord we commend ourselves to Your care, to You"
and so on. No, we don't! We commit ourselves.
There is nothing about us to be commended to God and we can't
commend ourselves, and there is no commendation where we are
concerned. But He could commend Himself to God. Not
only commit. But that by the way, if it sounds pedantic, don't
worry. But you see, He could do that, because there is another
side to Him. Well, here is the consuming unto God just as
completely and utterly as the altar fire consumed the
sacrifice to the last bit, away from God, so it consumed unto
God that which was according to God's mind. And by the
transmission of sin to the sacrifice it was cut off from God,
so by the remission of sin, it is brought unto God.
The function of the altar, is that two-fold, much more than
that, of course, but I just stay with that for this morning.

The Function of the Priest

The function of
the priest; what was that, and what is that? It is gathered
into one word: intercession. Intercession. We are using the
word "mediation". It means the same thing. Now, intercession,
dear friends, has a wider meaning than just praying. We have
reduced the meaning of intercession to praying, to think that
praying is all that intercession means. Well, praying is only
a part of intercession. Intercession is something very
much more than praying for one another. It means coming
and standing right in between and taking
responsibility for both. The word in the Old Testament is a
very much stronger word, it's a very strong word. It means "to
fall upon". There is one occasion when it is used, where
intercession was made to the king, see, in a certain matter.
Intercession was made unto the king. And the word means (and
it gives us a very great picture) a person has come and thrown
himself upon the king and said, "Oh, king, here is this
situation, here is this need" see, throwing upon... It is
difficult to describe, but that is the word that is used, it
just means "to throw upon".

If you get into
the Old Testament intercession, you will find that it wasn't
just men standing up and offering prayers on behalf of other
people. They had come right into a situation and they
had fallen upon God, they had cast themselves upon God over
that situation. They themselves are in between, as a
matter of life and death, in these two parts of the case - the
need and the supply, the helpless and the helper. Intercession
is not just passive prayer and asking for ourselves or for
others, intercession is nothing merely official. The priest is
not just an official with God who performs certain rites and
reads certain prayers. No, it is not official. It certainly is
not professional, something that you are paid to do because
you belong to a priestly order. No, intercession which is the
function of the priest, is personal responsibility for the
situation that exists - a stepping right into
it. You have several very vivid illustrations of this in this
first section of the Bible. You can just take out one from the
book of Numbers chapter 16. Remember that it says the people
murmured against Moses and Aaron. They had done it so often
and they had only just done it very seriously and grievously
and now they are doing it again, and the Lord says to Moses,
"Get out of the way, stand aside, let Me destroy this people.
I will destroy this people." And Moses falls on his face
before the Lord, and then he says to Aaron, the priest, "Take
a censer, take fire from the altar, put it in the censer and
go in amongst the people." And Aaron did so, and as he went
in, it says the plague had already begun, people were dying,
and Aaron moved between the dead and the living with his fire
from the altar, and so the plague was stayed. That's
intercession! Getting in between the dead and the
living. A very vivid illustration of priesthood isn't it? And
the function of priesthood. Inter... cession.

Now you notice as
introductory tothat very episode it says, "The
glory appeared in the door of the tabernacle." The glory
appeared. Here the glory appeared against rebellion, against
this thing which had risen up, contrary to God. And it was
testifying to the fact that this, this, this can
never, never come into the realm of the glory, the glory is
against this, the glory is against this;
therefore it must be dealt with, it must be put out of the
way, it must be consumed and unless a
covering is made, total destruction will take place.
And the fire from the altar provided the atonement so that the
glory was not unto destruction, but the atonement kept the way
open for these people to live and not die and the plague was
stayed. So we see the shadow of the Cross. Christ is both
Sacrifice and Priest. Both Sacrifice and Priest, well you need
not that I enlarge upon that I'm quite sure. God is the God of
glory and as such He comes down to man through the sacrifice
and the priest, through the Cross and the One who offers
Himself unto God. On the one side: made sin for us, He who
knew no sin, on the other side: offering Himself without
blemish unto God. And so the way of the glory is opened up.

I put a note about
the conservation of values; I don't think I can take the time
to dwell upon those, but it's quite clear that while these are
types, these are figures, these are symbols in the Old
Testament, they carry on something. They carry on something of
value to us. I put it like this: you know, the Jewish nation,
the Jewish nation now lying under the judgment of God, and
having been so for these many centuries (and it's a terrible
judgment of God) lies under that judgment not only because of
what it did to God's Son, Jesus Christ, but because of what,
in their doing to Jesus Christ, they did in relation to the
whole of their history of sacrifices. "That upon
this generation", is the word, "may come the blood
from Abel to Zechariah whom they slew between the horns of the
altar." The whole story of the whole history of sacrifice from
Abel right to the end of the Old Testament was gathered into
their act against Jesus Christ, because He summarized the
whole, but they were accounted responsible for Abel's blood,
for the blood of everysacrifice all the way
through the old dispensation. No wonder their judgment is so
terrible! See? All that.

The values, the
values from Abel onwards were carried forward into Christ. But
look round the other way: where there has been faith, as in
Abel, as in Noah, as in Abraham - faith in relation to this
work of the altar, of the sacrifice, of the blood - that is
attributed to those men in Christ. I am not one of those who
believe that the Old Testament saints have no place in the new
dispensation. I believe their faith in the
symbolic sacrifice meant as much, or now means as much
to them as our faith in the real sacrifice means. "They", says
the apostle, "without us could not be made complete", which is
a clear implication that with us they are made complete, and
it is their faith, it is the conservation and transmission of
these values. It is not all an Old Testament story that has
passed forever. It is being carried on both ways now. You and
I are going to be responsible for the Old Testament in this
sense: that we have got a vast document which says that God
has intervened in the history of this world all the way
through with an atonement, an atonement to save us; He has
done it. So the things that were written aforetime were
written for our learning.

Well, what does it
all mean? The atonement, the covering is renewed giving
effect to God's original purpose. It is God coming back and
saying, "The purpose then, the purpose of glory holds good,
and by this means we give effect to it, we ratify it, we
confirm it, by the Cross, by the sacrifice, by the mediation,
by the altar, by the priesthood, in spiritual meaning and
value. We are only setting our hand to the fact that we have
not given up the original intention, we are going however,
and
whatever it means, we are going to have the glory!
Going to have the glory!" And the atonement, or the Cross, if
you like, is rather a ratification of the original purpose of
God than anything else.

Shall we pass for
a few minutes to this next section, only a few minutes I
think.

Authority and the Glory

Joshua to the book
ofEsther is a long, long stretch. There's a lot
in it, and we are not going to attempt to take up all those
books, but just to seek to summarise the message. Here again,
you have only got to glance at a concordance to see what a
large place the altar has in this section in relation to what
comes in with this new section from Joshua right on to the
book of Esther, that is, the matter of authority.

The book of Joshua
brings in a new feature. Up to this point it has been Moses,
and the function of Moses, or the work of Moses, was the
leading out of a people, the formation of that people into a
nation, the instruction of that people as to the things of
God, and the establishing of the mediatorial system. That was
all the work of Moses and what he was called to do. And when
that is done, his service is finished and he is taken. Joshua,
his successor, comes in and brings in a new phase of things,
now the function and the work is conquest and dominion. And
that necessitates another phase of ministry. This means the
work of subduing a whole realm of antagonism, of possessing a
whole realm of covenant promise and of ruling in that
realm. That is what covers this whole section of the Bible:
subduing, possessing, ruling. And that all necessitates authority
and the fact that it is a necessity, that this thing
has got to be done, there has got to be a subduing and
a ruling. That itself implies that there is a system
of things that is contrary, and that being so, there can be no
glory until that is dealt with and brought under. Until there
is a subduing of a whole world of antagonism to God's mind,
there can be no glory.

A lot of people
have found difficulty (if you have come up against this
difficulty at any time let me say this word to you), difficulty
in understanding that God could be such a God as He is and
command that utter, complete wiping out destruction of
nations, even to the little children. Now, I could spend some
time in dealing with that, and if I did so, I don't think you
would have any ground left for any argument at all. You would
say, "God was just". For history has disclosed and
investigation has made abundantly manifest that such a state
of iniquity beyond all description existed amongst those
nations, that almost every infant was impregnated with
venereal disease! Forgive me even mentioning it, but such a
state of vileness, of vileness, the violation of every moral
law and every decency existed, so that their very religion was
founded upon moral iniquity, that the very temple could have
two thousand priestesses, every one of which was a prostitute!
Is God justified in wiping that out? Can any fragment of it be
to His glory? Now I could give you the data for that, but you
don't want more than that. Many have said, "The God of
righteousness commanding the destruction of people wholesale
like that?" Dear friends, dear friends, you and I know enough
about ourselves, without, without all that, to say
that the only thing that rightly should be done with me is
that I should be wiped out. Have you ever come there? Well, I
put it in this way, and I mean it, I mean what I say these are
not like words, there are times when we could apologise to God
for having a being, as we know ourselves. That is no
exaggeration. At any rate, if you don't feel like that, I have
often felt like that and asked the Lord to forgive me for
being alive at all, such a creature as I am. Well, there you
are, that cannot be glorified.

They had the
opportunity, they had the opportunity to repent. They knew!
Rahab, one of the countless harlots of the land, was right at
the very gateway of the land, and she told the spies that they
had heard all that God had done for their deliverance from
Egypt and what the Lord had done with them again and again.
They
knew in the land all about it! They could have
repented. The Gibeonites themselves confessed, confessed that
they knew God was with this people and they resorted to a
subterfuge to evade their own destruction because they knew,
they knew what God's attitude was toward them and
their country. They could have repented, but they chose not
to. And it was not destruction without opportunity. Well,
forgive all that, terrible, terrible, but we've got to not be
superficial about these things, we have got to justify God,
and if that is a terrible parenthesis, it only emphasises this
new phase of things. There has got to be a subduing, there has
got to be established a government, a rule, that will give no
place to anything like that. There has got to come in authority,
and men have got to recognise it.

So, in principle
it came in with Joshua and the altar here takes on this extra
feature; this extra feature: the principle of kingship,
kingship is introduced although the person is not yet
mentioned by that name or title. Joshua in principle was that,
and it shows that the principle was already recognised,
although the title or name was not used, because the book of
Judges follows the book of Joshua, flows on, indeed it
overlaps. If you look at the beginning of the book of Judges,
you will find that it overlaps the book of Joshua and there
the book of Judges says: "Every man did that which was right
in his own eyes because there was no king" [Judges 21:25].
There was no king. Well, Joshua introduces then the principle
of authority and that book shows what is possible when
authority is established. My word, it's a testimony is the
book of Joshua, to what tremendous things can be when there is
a central government, a central authority. It was conquest. It
was victory. It was subduing. It was possessing. It was
exploiting. But the book of Judges follows immediately, as I
have said, it overlaps, and here all we can say about it is as
one of the most terrible books in the whole Bible, it in
contrast shows the disasters and the tragedies that come about
when there is no central authority, when the principle of
kingship is not there operating. It's a terrible story. But,
mark you, it's always true, it's always true in principle.
This is the Old Testament way of illustrating great spiritual
divine truths. The principle obtains today, as we shall see.
The little book of Ruth overlaps Judges, or is written as
depicting some interlude in the tragedies of the book of
Judges, it is written right in the situation now: "Now it came
to pass in the days when the Judges ruled..." and that is the
book of Ruth. But, in the midst of it all, God reacting to
this state without authority, without government, without
kingship, God reacting and in the little book of Ruth
the king coming into view: Boaz and Ruth, and David. God
reacting to lawlessness in this beautiful, quiet, sovereign
way, to bring in His king. And so this whole section, in the
first place, presents us with the call for authority.